Want
by ulstergirl
Summary: Veronica on a sleepless night. Vignette. Includes spoilers through 2x10.


It's want.

Veronica was in her bed, staring up at her ceiling, salt dried in tracks on her skin.

Wallace was back. Thank God Wallace was back. If just one more thing had happened, just one more, maybe she wouldn't have waited until graduation to pack the convertible and blow town.

They didn't talk about the time he'd spent away or how his mother had reacted or whether his biological father was a good person, or any of the thousand things she'd emailed him about. All those things could wait. She was thinking of somehow injecting him with a tracking device, because he was her Wallace, no one else's, not Jackie's or Alicia's.

Just like her Duncan.

Veronica reached for the phone before she could talk herself out of it. After three rings he answered.

"Hey."

Veronica sniffed. "Where are you?"

"About an hour away," Duncan replied. "Happy New Year."

She smiled, despite herself. "I'm sure it won't be," she told him. "I didn't think you'd be back until just before school started back."

Duncan chuckled quietly. "If I had to spend another day in the Napa house with my mother the saint, she would have become one early."

"I miss you."

Duncan made a soft noise.

"Meet me somewhere when you get back to town."

The beach was deserted. Veronica pulled her denim jacket tight around her. She could hear the distant catcalls and hysterical laughter from a cheap hotel room on the beachfront, the curtained window still ringed in drooping white Christmas lights. Obviously, for some people, New Year's Eve didn't end with a kiss at midnight.

Duncan sat down next to her on the sand.

Veronica held her hair back from her face but didn't look over at him. "Remember when we were out here that night, with Logan and Lilly."

"Which time?" She could tell by his voice that he was smiling.

Veronica gazed out at the water for another minute. "Duncan, talk to me."

He didn't say anything, and she looked over at him, reached for his hand. He slipped his fingers between hers and stayed quiet.

"There's nothing to say."

"There's everything to say," she burst out. "I don't hear from you for two weeks. I guess your parents haven't forbid you from seeing me." At that he laughed softly, ducking his head, but didn't respond. "And-- and, Duncan, I can't believe you didn't tell me about Meg. You knew. You knew, and what, you just forgot to tell me? I mean, you were going to, right?"

When he spoke, his voice was low, but determined. "I read the letter Meg's aunt sent her, but that letter was before the crash. I thought that even if Meg was pregnant before, that there was no way the baby could have lived, through all that. For a while there, they weren't even sure if Meg was ever gonna wake up again."

Her skin went cold, even the fingers curled against his palm. Even knowing that she was touching him made her feel sick. "How did you get a letter Meg's aunt sent her? Was her mail being forwarded to you or something?"

He didn't respond until she stared hard at him, her lower lip trembling slightly, just once. "In the air vent with the notebook." His voice was soft, reluctant, defeated. He'd never intended to tell her.

She stood, then, walked out toward the water. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her socks, leaving her feet bare. The water was shocking cold as it lapped over her toes. A burst of laughter, tinny and muffled by distance, reached her.

How had she ever expected anything to be the same.

She wanted to go back to that night, before. Before Shelly's party and before Lilly had told her that she should just move on. Back when being Duncan's girlfriend had meant limousines and corsages and passed notes and a sure bet to be at least nominated for prom queen. The status of hanging on his arm, the innocent press of his kisses, nothing more.

But she wasn't that girl anymore. He had kept so much from her, even then; the epilepsy, the outbursts, Celeste Kane's assertion that she was his illegitimate half-sister. Everything, for so long, had been lies, lies built on lies, but she wondered if maybe the Duncan she had loved, the Duncan she still loved, with no reason or reflection, if he had ever really existed.

Her eyes were blurred with tears by the time he waded out into the water and put his arm around her, and she leaned her head against his shoulder, her arms wrapped tight over her waist.

"Duncan, this isn't working," she said, her voice breaking.

He stroked a hand over her wind-tossed hair. "It was all simple before," he said. "Before Lilly..."

Veronica nodded. His shirt was soft against her cheek. "I've never stopped loving you," she said. "But all I hear all day, every day, is lies. From everyone. I need someone who isn't going to do that to me, not anymore."

He didn't move, didn't speak. The water lapped at her ankles, over her cuffs. She cried into the ocean and he stroked her hair. She could taste champagne on her tongue and she could hear Lilly laughing and when she finally tilted her head back to see into his face, through the shadows and tainted moonlight, he looked the same as he had that night, and she could not move.

"I thought that I could never be with you," he said. "Not... again. I thought I could move on."

"You may as well," she said. "Did you tell your parents about your daughter? Your-- responsibility," she said, choking on the last word.

He shook his head.

"At least I'm not the only one you lie to," she said, her voice bitter. She pulled away from him and walked back toward the beach, but this time he followed.

"Veronica."

"Just-- just don't," she said, kneeling to sweep up her shoes. "Don't. I signed off any rights I had to the Kanes a long time ago. Let's just make it official."

His hand closed around her wrist, turning her to face him. "I don't care about that. I care about you."

"No you don't!" she shouted. The distant laughter drifted toward them again. "How can you say you care about me, after all this--"

"Why didn't you break up with me after you saw Meg in the hospital," he said. "Why didn't you."

She gave a self-depricating chuckle, sarcastic and bitter. "Because I fooled myself into believing that maybe we could get through this. But you, this, this is not it. I'm not sticking around just so I can find out a year from now that you--" She jerked away from him, spreading her arms. "That you knocked up some other girl during a night you don't even remember, that you've moved Dick and Beav into the next room and you're tag-teaming Kendall whenever I'm home studying..."

Something shifted in his eyes, then, and without thinking, without giving herself time to think, she shoved him backward and ran. She could see two guys standing on the balcony outside the hotel room, red plastic cups in their hands. She could see light and laughter and-- and normal. What she would never be again.

"Veronica, wait!"

When he caught up with her that time, she could not break his grip. She had never seen him with such an expression, with such rage in his eyes.

"Kendall came to me, she asked me-- and I said no. Because of you. I slept with Meg once, never again, because of you. My parents are furious with me, and I'm here, I'm still here, because of you. Because you're the one I want to be with. I did care about Meg. I did. And now I have a daughter. If that's why you want to leave me, fine. Go. But I can't take it back now. I can't pretend none of this happened, not anymore. I've spent so long thinking of all I'd done wrong. My parents, all but telling me that I'd killed my own sister, knowing I'd slept with you and how bad that was, the Kane legacy, all of it, I'm so sick of it, Veronica."

She put her hand on his cheek. His eyes still blazed. "What do you want, Duncan."

"Is it so bad that I want you? That I want to take my daughter and go away from here and be with you."

She smiled, then.

"I drove straight through tonight just to see you."

She took a breath, then put her arms around him. "What are we going to do."

He exhaled as though a weight had lifted. "I don't know," he admitted. "I don't know. But I don't have-- I've never cared about anyone the way I do about you." He brushed a stray hair out of her face. "And I don't know what I'll do if I lose you again."

"No more lies," she said, her hands on his cheeks, forcing his blue eyes to hers. "Say it. Don't lie to me again. Not ever. Not about anything. Not the color of your socks or your Latin homework, or anything."

He nodded. "Okay."

"Then we can get through this," she said, nodding. "We can do this. Because I can't keep going like this, not anymore. I don't have anyone else to trust. Wallace finally came back tonight, and I've had a terrible break, and I just-- I am just one, one," she put her fingers the thickness of a grain of sand apart, "one more single crappy thing has to happen before I snap and blow this town for good."

"You and me both," he said, and smiled, and he kissed her.

For the space of that moment, the creeping despair, the doubt, the fear was drowned in the sound of the waves and the blood in her ears.

Things would never be the same, but what they had been, maybe that hadn't been so good after all. She wanted more, and for now, she could believe that he would at least try. That they could make this work, and figure out the complications later. His parents and his child and their mutual guilt over Meg's death, Kendall and Logan and graduation and college.

"Tell me everything's gonna be all right," she whispered, closing her eyes, her cheek against his shoulder. "That's all I want."


End file.
